Entries Tagged 'Interviews' ↓

Written by Michael Varrati
Filmmaker Bart Mastronardi certainly has a lot to celebrate these days.
His independent horror film, Vindication (review), took close to five years to complete, but when it was released on DVD earlier last month, it sold out almost instantly in many of the stores in which it was being carried. In addition to [...]

Interview by Sarah “Fatally Yours” Jahier
Katrena Rochell co-stars in the much anticipated comic book adapted film Kick-Ass starring Nicholas Cage and Mark Strong. Katrena plays a sexy junkie in the Matthew Vaughn directed film, produced by Brad Pitt’s Plan B Production Company, which was recently released in the US from Lionsgate. Also in 2010, Katrena [...]

Interview by Sarah “Fatally Yours” Jahier
Jeremy C. Shipp is a weird author of Bizarro, horror, dark fantasy, and magic realism. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in over 50 publications, the likes of Cemetery Dance, ChiZine, Harlan County Horrors, Apex Magazine, Pseudopod, and The Bizarro Starter Kit (blue). While preparing for the forthcoming collapse [...]

Remember last week, when I reviewed We Will Bury You #1? And then that night on The Scare-ening, Heidi and I talked with Brea Grant, one of the book's writers? And then Zane Austin Grant, the other writer on the book, was a surprise call-in guest? And they were cool? Remember all that? Wasn't it cool? Well, it gets even cooler because Zane went and answered some questions. Questions from ME! Do you think I'm cool??

One thing I love about both Brea and Zane is that they're actually, you know, horror fans. Talking with them obliterates any doubts you may have about their motivation behind writing We Will Bury You, about whether or not it's simply a vanity project for some actress. I mean...who knew The Driller Killer could provide such fodder for discourse?

I'm an only child, but from my understanding, brothers and sisters are supposed to hate each other and pull each others' hair. Why, then, would you want to write a comic book with your sister? How did the idea of working together come about?

We both like comics and horror movies, and we get along really well, so…. I’m always surprised when people ask about sibling rivalry. I think we compliment each other’s strengths and weaknesses well while working together.

Practically speaking, how did you share scripting duties (ie, did you divide up the characters, etc)?

The way we work is we read a lot about our setting and make notes for stories. Then we get together and outline them, so we knew basically what’s going to happen, but not necessarily how it was going to play out. From there, we just traded off scenes, which I think works for the most part. Can you tell what I wrote and what she wrote? I can’t, because we edited each other so much to keep the tone consistent. Brea wrote all the nasty parts while I looked away and covered my ears, and I did the moralizing parts, so that’s breaks down writing duties into solid categories.

Why is We Will Bury You set in the 1920s?

The 1920’s was the first decade of sexual revolution in the U.S. and a lot of different political ideas were being discussed leading up the great depression, which snuffed a lot of those kinds of things out because suddenly more people were just trying to survive. The lack of certain technologies like cell phones and future weapons makes the spread of mass violence scarier as well. Plus, it just had a good aesthetic that works out well as a setting for a visual medium like comics. We wanted to take the magic of pre-code movies and add it to the outcasts of Tod Browning’s films and make it relevant and entertaining.

What are some of your influences for WWBY, both in terms of horror (whether written, cinematic, or other) and comics?

We try to have a lot of reveals in the books, which were inspired by the surprise endings of EC horror comics. And the shallowness of some of the people Mirah and Fanya run into sort of match the EC tone, where people react almost too normally but they are all hiding something. Also, there is a way in which, we are also reacting to Walking Dead, which pushed the genre in a way by showing horror comics can be ongoing and still have some attachment to the traditional horror genre. I mean Swamp Thing is one of my favorite comics, and it’s horror in a way (he fights mermaid vampires, right?), but it seems like an uncomfortable fit for the genre. A lot of Vertigo horror stuff is like that, especially from the 1990’s, where it’s scary and amazing, but the tone is more psychedelic than horrific, which we eventually delve into. We were inspired, of course, by Romero, but there are other pieces we pull from like Wild Zero (which has a trans person), the Greek zombie film Evil, 28 Days Later, and in the first issue we played with the slasher view from the first page. We give you the view from the husband of this woman he is obsessed with and she is dressing, and he’s nuts.

How did you come across Kyle Strahm's work, and what is it about his art that attracted you? Was there a specific style you wanted when you were looking for an artist, or did it strike you when you found it?

We looked a lot of artists, and Kyle’s portfolio stood out because it was cartoony but had the grotesque feel of too many wrinkles to it, which is how we wanted to write this book. We did some color tests with Zac Atkins, the colorist on the book, on Kyle’s work and really liked the way it looked.

How are you working with Kyle in terms of the script? Are you giving him detailed panel descriptions à la Alan Moore, or are you using the "Marvel method", or something in-between?

We don’t write poetry in our scripts, though we hope to some day. I’m not sure if you can get away with doing that your first book, the artist might quit. We tend to stick to basic descriptions, dialog, and reference pictures for some things. When Kyle wants more, he asks. Like we were bad about military uniform research and what revolvers officers were issued, so he just asked and we did some research and got back to him.

Why do you think comics are the best medium to use in telling this story?

Comics is the best medium to tell any story…. Heh…. But also, I think horror works best as a visual medium, or maybe easiest as a visual medium is more accurate. People have a stronger reaction to seeing pain than reading about it. I do anyway.

In the better zombie films, zombies are usually representative of a societal issue or a certain populace. I have my own thoughts on what they represent in WWBY...did you intend for them to be metaphorical, or did you just choose zombies for your bad guys?

On societal issues and horror, I had an argument with my friend Carrie, who does tryharderyall blog, about Driller Killer a while back because on your blog, you gave it a kind of class analysis, which is my default to reading pretty much everything except that movie. I think Abel Ferrara drills strangers because he is sexually repressed and the gay art dealer and the freaky girlfriend and ambiguous art band singer throw that repression in his face and he can’t deal, and she agreed with your analysis… in the end I saw the film as doing both. Anyway, I think Romero’s films tore apart race and class and gender in nuanced ways that we aspire to, but we use our zombies as heavy handed metaphor for fundamentalist views about economic and cultural values.

How much backstory/history is there going to be for the outbreak in WWBY? Do you think it's important for writers and/or filmmakers to give a reason why the dead return to life?

In the beginning, We Will Bury You was set up as three volumes and the third would have a metaphysical explanation of the gates of hell and how they had to be closed, but no one gets a contract for 36 issues on their first book, so that didn’t happen. Really, I’m of the opinion that it’s not that important why the dead come back. When people try to rationalize zombies, I usually get bored. Whether they explain it through the occult, like Fulci’s hanging priest or Louisiana hotel with a gate to hell installed in the basement, or nuclear waste like in Return of the Living Dead, it just takes away from the fact that most people would never know why, but just have to come up with a way to live.

Are your zombies slow or fast? On which side of the fast/slow zombie horror nerd argument do your loyalties lie?

Fast zombies are scary and have made slow zombies harder to make scary, which is sad. Our zombies are about mass, so they are slow. I’m scared of those rooms in mansions that have walls that close in on you, sometimes with spikes. I want to find the architect who designed those rooms, but that’s a different story. Our zombies are scary like those rooms.

When I think of spiked rooms, I think of Resident Evil. Actually, when I think of ANYTHING I think of Resident Evil. I love Resident Evil.

Talk a bit about being a comics fan and a horror fan. How did you get into each, what are some of your favorites, etc. What do you consider to be the best horror comic of today? Of all time? What's your favorite zombie movie?

I got into comics when I was a kid, but I was scared of horror comics when I was that young. Now, I am a fan of the old EC stuff like Tales from the Crypt and Vault of Horror, but I think the best contemporary horror comics are Locke and Key, Creepy, Walking Dead, Hellblazer, Night Business and pretty much any horror books Ben Templesmith does. Brea actually got into horror films before me, so I would watch stuff she rented sometimes. We had seen all the major stuff like the Elm Streets and 13ths and that stuff, and then about five years ago my friend Orion moved in with me and brought his horror VHS collection, which is in the hundreds. So, I got to know the genre a bit better through that, got to see more Italian stuff, and now my friend Carrie has a pretty good collection of VHS horror, some really good/bad Media stuff. My favorite zombie movie is the original Dawn.

Are you hitting any conventions this summer? Any more comics in your future?

I will be at MoCCA fest in New York April 10th and 11th, San Diego Comicon this summer, and Small Press Expo in D.C./Maryland in September. I hope to do some more cons, and we will probably be in Austin and have a release for the second issue of We Will Bury You the last week in April. I have an article about comics creator Dash Shaw coming out in Looking Glass Magazine this month. I’m teaching a comics writing course to teens at Brooklyn Artists Gym, and Brea and I are working on another series we hope gets picked up… and I want to do a comic version of Driller Killer.

Interview by Sarah “Fatally Yours” Jahier
I’ve been a fan of the UK-based GoreZone Magazine for quite some time now and always delight in flipping through its glossy, well-informed pages. So, I was tickled blood-red when the opportunity arose to interview their mastermind and editor-in-chief, Bryn Hammond.
Bryn Hammond has been entrenched in the horror genre for [...]

Interview Sarah “Fatally Yours” Jahier
Brian Patrick O’Toole is an accomplished screenwriter and producer who has had a varied career from video game designer to literary agent to Fangoria correspondent to screenwriter and producer. Brian has worked on such genre films like Cemetery Gates, Dog Soldiers (review) and the recent indie hits Evilution (review) and Basement [...]

Written by Theron Neel
This interview is part of Fatally-Yours’ Women in Horror interview series. We’ll be featuring interviews with women in the horror industry the whole month of February (and a bit of March)! Get a complete list of Women in Horror interviews here!
It’s understatement to say Brooke Lemke is a busy lady. She just [...]

Written by Theron Neel
This interview is part of Fatally-Yours’ Women in Horror interview series. We’ll be featuring interviews with women in the horror industry the whole month of February (and a bit of March)! Get a complete list of Women in Horror interviews here!
It could be said that actress Rena Riffel was born to [...]

Written by Michael Varrati
This interview is part of Fatally-Yours’ Women in Horror interview series. We’ll be featuring interviews with women in the horror industry the whole month of February (and a bit of March)! Get a complete list of Women in Horror interviews here!
When thinking of indie horror icon Amy Lynn Best, the term “triple [...]

Interview by Sarah “Fatally Yours” Jahier
This interview is part of Fatally-Yours’ Women in Horror interview series. We’ll be featuring interviews with women in the horror industry the whole month of February (and a bit of March)! Get a complete list of Women in Horror interviews here!
Lin Pyatt has always loved horror. She grew up on [...]

Written by Michael Varrati
This interview is part of Fatally-Yours’ Women in Horror interview series. We’ll be featuring interviews with women in the horror industry the whole month of February (and a bit of March)! Get a complete list of Women in Horror interviews here!
Hands down, women are cooler than men. This isn’t so much a [...]

Interview by Sarah “Fatally Yours” Jahier
This interview is part of Fatally-Yours’ Women in Horror interview series. We’ll be featuring interviews with women in the horror industry the whole month of February (and a bit of March)! Get a complete list of Women in Horror interviews here!
Lis Effing Fies is the producer/writer/director/adequate actor/hippie wrangler/songwriter/nudist in the [...]

Interview by Sarah “Fatally Yours” Jahier
This interview is part of Fatally-Yours’ Women in Horror interview series. We’ll be featuring interviews with women in the horror industry the whole month of February (and a bit of March)! Get a complete list of Women in Horror interviews here!
Jamie Jenkins, known by many as “Maven” or “Moviemaven” in [...]

Hey, did you listen to part one of The Graveyard Show podcast that features moi and Shannon Lark? Well, if you haven't, it's not to late. If you have, you may (or, frankly, you may not) be pleased to know that part two of the show has been posted. If my memory serves me at all, I think we got into a lively discussion about the social responsibilities that actors have (or don't have), and horrordom's favorite vampire movie, Twilight. Give it a listen- all the cool kids are doing it, I swear.

I know that doesn't make any sense whatsoever and the whole analogy or metaphor or what have you falls apart as soon as you think about it...but look, I'm desperate for excuses to post pictures of the Sagal twins around here, so I'll take what I can get.

And so will you! And you'll LIKE it!

Big thanks to The Graveyard Show for asking me back, although I find the pressure to not be a boring guest rather stressful. Hooray!

So, like, remember the other day when I put up a link to my review of Bitch Slap that's currently nestled in the sweet, sweet bosom of Pretty/Scary? Yeah, me too. Wasn't that neat? Yeah, I think so too. Well kids, now there's more of my...uh...Bitch Slappery posted over there. This time in the form of: interviews! Yes, some chattings with actresses Erin Cummings, Julia Voth, and America Olivo...not to mention stunt coordinator supreme Zoe fucking Bell. Read it...if you dare! Clickety click.

Some trivia for you: Julia Voth is the face behind Jill Valentine in the Gamecube remake/relaunch of Resident Evil.

Not gonna lie: there were times during the interview where I was totally going "Hurrr hurr hurrrrr...Resident Evil....hurrr....Jill Valentine....", for as you know I loves me some Resident Evil. Thankfully I was only doing it in my head. Although in retrospect, had I been doing it out loud, it may have made for a nice story for everyone assembled to tell later on.